Hope, Fire and Lies
by Tearlit
Summary: A look at the Marauders and Lily from 7th year until the end of the first war. James/Lily, Sirius/Lily. ONE SHOT.


**Disclaimer:** Nope, don't own it.

**A/N:** I wrote this using the gamma set of prompts from the 1sentence Live Journal community. You're supposed to write one sentence based around each of the 50 prompts without altering the order of them. Written for the lovely Opheliet, who is not on this site, but it's for her all the same.

* * *

…

_My heart has lost its wind now…my love has drifted out to sea._

_Where We Went Wrong by The Hush Sound_

…

**#1: Ring**

Lily Evans twirled her wand in slow circles, curling the fine stream of purple smoke issuing from its tip into rings in the air before her; when James walked up the girl tipped her head to the side briefly and, with a sharp puff of air, blew them into a hazy shapelessness.

**#2: Hero**

All the boys wanted to be heroes, to destroy the Death Eaters and Voldemort and to win the war; Lily just wanted to keep safe who and what she loved.

**#3: Memory**

Sirius stumbled upon her in the library, tears streaming down her cheeks and memories dripping from the end of her wand, overflowing the bottle in front of her and covering the desk with a silvery luminescence that he would swear never fully faded, even after he helped her return them to their rightful place.

**#4: Box**

"SWEETS!" James roared as he opened a package from his mum, causing Sirius, Peter and Remus to mob him and Lily to curl her lip in disgust as the four seventh years crammed their mouths full of the candies and chocolates.

**#5: Run**

James shoved her out of the line of fire and Sirius caught her before she could hit the ground, nearly jerking her off her feet as they pounded across the cobbled streets of Hogsmeade toward the castle while spells flew all around them like a deathly light show.

**#6: Hurricane**

The winds blew violently as they staggered across the grounds, tearing at their clothes and whipping Lily's hair into everyone - only they would be crazy enough to attempt to have their break outdoors in such a violent storm.

**#7: Wings**

"It's beautiful," Lily murmured, staring in awe at the bird that James conjured from the flames of the candle which lit their table in the library; a few feet away from them Severus Snape glared mutinously at the pair and waved his wand, extinguishing the light.

**#8: Cold**

Each and every time they got word of new deaths, Lily would shiver for hours even though she would don layers of jumpers and James would wrap her in his cloak and then in his arms.

**#9: Red**

The first time he called her Red, Lily Evans slapped Sirius Black across the face so hard he swore he saw stars; the second time she kissed him.

**#10: Drink**

"And that is precisely why I don't drink," Lily said simply to Remus as Sirius streaked through the common room and James dangled precariously from the draperies.

**#11: Midnight**

Lily often found herself kneeling in front of the fireplace at midnight, staring deep into the flames, looking for something that she could not name.

**#12: Temptation**

The first time she found herself in Sirius' bed was an accident, or so they both liked to think, and he held her close and stroked her hair until she fell asleep, waking her before dawn so James wouldn't see her leave because they both knew he would never believe that nothing happened between them.

**#13: View**

"_The only good thing about a broomstick is the view_," Lily thought to herself, clutching James around the middle and trying desperately not to throw up on his back as they zoomed across the grounds.

**#14: Music**

The first time James and Lily danced was on the top of the Astronomy tower as Sirius played a kazoo to the tune of what he and James insisted was a romantic waltz.

**#15: Silk**

As Lily rolled onto her stomach and the sheet slipped down her bare back Sirius traced her shoulder blades with his fingertips, thinking to himself that he had never felt anything so soft.

**#16: Cover**

Using the darkness as a cover, Lily pulled James into an empty classroom and kissed him so soundly that he was left gasping for breath when she pulled away.

**#17: Promise**

When James managed to get down on one knee in one of the tiny boats that the new graduates were using to sail away from Hogwarts for the last time and pulled out a diamond ring, (with the most shell shocked expression on his face) Lily threw all her doubts to the wind and shrieked YES, hurling herself at him so violently that the vessel tipped over, spilling everyone, including a neighboring boat due to Sirius' wild thrashing, into the lake.

**#18: Dream**

When she was a little girl Lily dreamed of a huge wedding with a princess gown and a cake as tall as she was - when her father died and she saw how broken her mother was she swore she would not marry, but now here she was, making her way to James in an elegant set of dress robes with a handful of her friends watching and a modest cake on a side table; she would not have it any other way.

**#19: Candle**

Every night that James was out past midnight Lily placed a lit candle in the window in hopes that it would somehow be enough to guide him home.

**#20: Talent**

Talent was what drew Lord Voldemort to James and Lily; decency was what caused them to refuse an offer that would temp the best of men and completely enthrall the worst of them.

**#21: Silence**

The silence pressed in around her as Lily slipped from James's arms in middle of the night, tripping over the sleeping form of Sirius who _insisted_ he have a pallet just beside their bed, to touch the inside of her wrist to Peter's forehead as he slept on the couch before checking Remus' latest wounds gently as he dozed on a bed roll by the fire.

**#22: Journey**

It was hard, when they were gone for days with no word, and Lily wasn't even given the satisfaction of giving them a taste of their own medicine, however unfair it would be, because for whatever reason Dumbledore always made sure her missions were shorter and kept her closer to home.

**#23: Fire**

It was blistering and more chaotic than she ever could've imagined in her worst nightmares inside the blazing house as Lily tried desperately to drag the unconscious (and rather singed) body of Dorcas Meadowes to safety; her own wand had been borrowed by Sirius Black because Remus borrowed his because Peter borrowed his because his own had been broken and James was on a mission and her mind was a whirlwind and she didn't even think of grabbing for Dorcas's at all.

**#24: Strength**

Sirius heard the screams and didn't even think twice about running headlong through a wall into a flaming building - Lily was in trouble and no one died on his watch.

**#25: Mask**

Sirius dodged a killing curse and in sheer desperation fired back one of his own - his knees buckled as the mask fell away from the lifeless body, revealing the proud, sneering face of Regulus Black.

**#26: Ice**

Lily was the first to notice the change in Sirius, even before James did, and the ice in his eyes and voice and heart saddened her more than any of the recent attacks and subsequent deaths had.

**#27: Fall**

It was hard for Lily to admire the golden colors of the leaves that dripped from trees along the street when her husband had been too exhausted to do more than give her a peck on the cheek in weeks, when her sometimes lover regarded her with a cold indifference, when Dorcas, her best friend, was dead, when Remus never seemed to come around for more than five minutes at a time and when Peter was always away.

**#28: Forgotten**

Lily woke to James crawling into the bed, hands reaching out and pulling her close, and she was glad to oblige him as his fingertips roamed her body and he touched her in all the right places, lips brushing across her neck and shoulders and lower - some part of her had forgotten just how this made her feel.

**#29: Dance**

A new kind of normal was reached as James made time for her at least once a week, as Dumbledore let her missions take her farther from home, as Remus began to accompany her, as Peter dropped by more; however Sirius was more distant than ever.

**#30: Body**

The witch bit her lip as she turned this way and that in the mirror, studying her naked form; her breasts were fuller, the bump more pronounced and she knew that she wouldn't be able to hide it from James much longer.

**#31: Sacred**

James held his wife as if she was the most precious thing known to man, he loved her as if it were the last time he would see her, he spoke of her as though there were no one better, brighter or more beautiful, and, in his eyes, she was all of those things and more.

**#32: Farewells**

Every time any of them said goodbye they wondered if this time would be the last, if they would come home, or if home would be where the world and the war finally caught up to them.

**#33: World**

As James's mouth worked open and closed, open and closed, with no sound coming out at all, Lily's entire world crumbled - she had known it would come as a shock, but she had hoped he would at least be a tiny bit pleased about the baby she was carrying.

**#34: Formal**

Sirius was stiff with her until she pulled the thin robes tight over her middle and he realized what it meant, then he smiled for the first time in weeks.

**#35: Fever**

James went back and forth from his best friend to his wife, who were laid in separate bedrooms across the hall from each other, wiping their foreheads with cool rags and enticing them to drink fluids - it was during one stint with Sirius that the man began to rant and rave and apologize to his brother for murdering him; the glass that James was holding shattered on the floor.

**#36: Laugh**

James laughed at Lily, full and robust and surprised, when he realized she had thought he didn't want their child.

**#37: Lies**

"I'm fine," Lily choked out, trying to smile, even as the blood stained her robes and her knees buckled, forcing Sirius to catch her with one arm as he fought off the intruding Death Eater with the other.

**#38: Forever**

The night stretched on and on as Sirius and Remus sat side by side in James's sitting room listening to Lily's cries from upstairs; as the first rays of morning light broke through the curtains they heard James give a joyful whoop and the cry of an infant was mixed in the melee.

**#39: Overwhelmed**

Lily was pacing the floor, clutching a squalling, colicky Harry, as James and Sirius fell out of the fireplace at the same time and began to bleed profusely on her rug.

**#40: Whisper**

Their love was a language of soft, stolen touches, of carefully exchanged letters as they greeted one another or passed the baby back and forth, of whispers against each other's hair as they hugged goodbye - they couldn't shout it from the rooftops but that didn't make it any less real.

**#41: Wait**

"Wait!" Lily cried out as Remus stormed from the house, not looking back even once, and, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she just knew that she would never see him again.

**#42: Talk**

Their conversations were non-verbal, or else halting and punctuated by caring for Harry, Order members parading through their house, missions and funerals, but they were together, and sometimes that just had to be enough.

**#43: Search**

Sirius pinned her against the wall, one hand on either side of the woman's face, his body pressed tightly to hers, and Lily's breath was trapped in her lungs as he gazed deeply into her eyes, pleading, "Can't you see it's the only way?"

**#44: Hope**

The hope in Sirius Black's eyes was a tangible thing as he performed the Secret Keeper ritual which placed the lives of the three people in loved best in the world in the hands of the last person anyone would expect to be trusted with such an honor - Peter Pettigrew.

**#45: Eclipse**

The lamp that hung on the wall of the nursery went out at the exact moment that Lily heard her husband fall - it was then that she knew it was over.

**#46: Gravity**

Lily Evans Potter floated uncertainly in a world that was white and gray, black and tan, blue and green and red and purple all at once and it was only when she saw James that everything swirled into focus and she realized that they were in the field in Hogsmeade where James had proposed to her, but for all that she tried she could not figure out why.

**#47: Highway**

Sirius sped down the highway on his motorbike, for once keeping to the ground rather than the air, his thoughts on James and Lily and Harry and what exactly he would do to that slimy rat if he had betrayed them.

**#48: Unknown**

Lily clung to her husband in the strange world that was neither cold nor hot, where they were never hungry, where there was no more war, where her heart and arms ached for her child who survived, but she was not alone, and she knew that somehow everything would be okay.

**#49: Lock**

The door slammed shut and Sirius collapsed to the ground, gripping the bars of his cell with both hands, mouth opened to cry out that he was innocent, that he deserved a trial, but the grief and unbearable pain of wretched memories overtook him and he could not think, could not speak, even to save himself.

**#50: Breathe**

Remus inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to get a grip on himself before he tore into someone or something, before he traveled to Azkaban and ripped Sirius apart with his bare hands for betraying them all, before he broke down with the weight of the oh so sudden loss of all he had ever held dear.


End file.
